द्वौ भूतसर्गौ लोकेऽस्मिन्दैव आसुर एव च ।दैवो विस्तरशः प्रोक्त आसुरं पार्थ मे शृणु॥
dvau bhūta-sargau loke ’smin daiva āsura eva cadaivo vistaraśaḥ prokta āsuraṃ pārtha me śṛṇu
Word by word
The verse says
There are two kinds of being made in this world, the divine and the demonic. The divine has been spoken of at length. Hear from me now about the other, Arjuna.
In plain words
He announces what is coming, which is unusual, and it reads like a warning.
The good side has already been covered, in three verses of listing. Now fifteen verses on the other one.
That ratio is worth holding on to while you read what follows. Far longer is spent on this than on the qualities he recommends, and the reason is that the thing is very hard to see from inside.
Where you've felt this · in study
A teacher spends ten minutes explaining how to solve the problem and forty minutes on the four ways students get it wrong. Nobody in the room minds. The right method was obvious once it had been said. The wrong ones were the interesting part, because every one of them felt completely reasonable at the time.
Going deeper
Two kinds of being, named flatly, is the most misread sentence in this chapter, so it is worth being careful about what it does and does not say.
It does not say two kinds of people, sorted at birth and stuck there. The word is about what is made, what comes into being - and what follows is a description of a way of seeing, not of a class of persons.
That matters because of how this passage has actually been used. Whole groups of human beings have been called demonic on the strength of it, by people who had a reason to want them called that. Nothing here supports it. The qualities about to be listed are ones you can watch arrive in yourself on a bad enough day, which is precisely why they are given at this length.
So read what comes next as a mirror rather than a list of other people. That is harder, and it is the only reading that does you any good.